The build stated off with [Zach] putting thermal sensors on the CPU, the RSX, and Northbridge of his PS3. After starting out controlling the fan with his laptop, he moved on to an integrated fan and display controller after seeing this post about a ‘hidden display.’ In the end, one of the coolest looking PS3 mods we’ve ever seen was born.

The build runs off an Arduino Pro that gets the temperatures from the sensors, prints everything to a custom 7-segment display board, and controls the fan. [Zach] thankfully made the Arduino source available and also put up some board files if you’d like to make your own. It’s a pretty impressive build that’s completely invisible when the PS3 is powered off.

I remember being amused when I discovered that my fat PS3 was made with translucent plastic. I am fairly surprised that nobody thought of this before…

One of these days, I’ll get motivated to hack on that fat PS3, and something similar to this will be toward the top of the list of clever things to do with it. (It’s only good for hacks, anyway: The Blu-Ray portion of the optical drive is dead, though the rest of it works fine…)

@killerbug: Cypress makes a series of microcontrollers for capacitive touch sensor driving which are quite cheap.(I bought a dozen of the mid-range ones for $2.50 each) The downside is, the ones I got are QFN(my fault for looking for a challenge, they do make more hobbyist-friendly sizes), and I think I burned the first one up while trying to solder it to a breakout board.

But hey, that’s why I bought a dozen, right?

@asiekierka: as soon as a certain Hack-A-Day reader I won’t name decides this can be used for piracy and notifies them.(It can’t, but he’ll decide it can anyway.)